I paid 50 bucks for the first one. I rushed to town to get a copy from Hastings before they closed (they were the only store that had it on release day where we lived). Rushed. As in above speed limits on back roads to get to the store before closing.

The game had gotten stellar reviews. It was from Peter Molyneux. From Bullfrog fame, one of the best developers of all time. You know, Bullfrog? As in Dungeon Keeper? Syndicate? Populous? It's decended from freaking pc royalty....

So what the heck went wrong?

Anyone want to tell me why the reviewers never finished the game (or, heck, played more than an hour and a half) before writing the reviews? What happened, Pete? Where did the magic go? Dungeon Keeper? Synicate? Populous???

You can probably guess, but I'm most definately NOT IN.

I paid 50 bucks. I figure Pete still owes me a decent game for my money. And I'm discounting for the amusement I got from watching my wife play, trying to teach her avatar (a cow, as she's often used the handle Holy Cow) and the results of said teaching: a canibalistic, man eating cow that also often dined on rocks and feces.

BTW, she was playing as the force of Good, not as Evil.

Feh. If it hits 20 bucks I'll probably pick it up. I'm such a tool for Molyneux. I think that there's a part of my brain that believes if I keep giving him money, he'll eventually revisit the Dungeon Keeper license.

that was the purchase that made me go 'why am i paying $45 for one game?' - especially since my backlog had reached the point of no return a while beforehand and i had no chance of catching up anytime in the near future. so... it's been the bargain and used bins, ever since.

and re: B&W - i never got very far past the first level, but i really enjoyed that much, at least!

EDIT: thinking back more, i did* actually purchase Dungeon Siege brand-new the next year (?!!) (tho it did have a large rebate attached to it, so i only paid $23 for that title). needless to say, the coffin was now firmly nailed shut; never again; etc.

Out. It would just get dropped for Civilization 4 a couple of weeks later. Not only that, but a review I read stated it's basically a more polished version of the original - complete with villagers complaining constantly. :roll:

I wouldn't buy B & W 2 if everyone HERE said it was the second coming.

I bought the first one the moment it was available and that was possibly the worst game related decision I ever made.

I could never train my tiger to do anything, he would just eat villagers. I read faqs, tips, messageboards galore. I'm not a newbie to gaming, yet I could not get him to do what I wanted. Everyone kept saying "use the monkey, he is easy to train"...but I wanted the frickin' tiger! What was the point of including pets if they were not trainable the way the gameplayer, not gamemaker, wanted to train them?

There were other issues of course, but that killed it for me. I spent untold HOURS trying to train that pet, I want those hours back dammit.

The Movies? Well, all I can say is that it will live or die on how flexible the moviemaker portion is. If everyone who owns the game is turning out movies that look exactly like everyone else's, the game will be dead in the water.

I'd sooner pay $50 for someone to kick me in the nuts than buy Black and White 2. It'd probably be less painful in the long run.

Actually it'd probably be the same experience, just without the pretty graphics and British sense of humor.

I tried it out when Crayola and I were roomies, but could never quite get the hand gestures just right without also backhanding my creature. Not to mention, the game was just stupid. I never saw any reason to play with a tomagachi, and B&W struck me as a hand-held tomagachi just with shinier graphics. More of the same? Hell no.

Like some of the others, I jumped on B&W immediately upon it's release. I was stoked, from all the glowing reviews, B&W's gaming pedigree and following the B&W forums. Shit, Peter M himself posted there. Yeah, I took in the hype like a chump.

It now has a place in my personal gaming history as one of only two games that I actually took the time to break the CD(s) before throwing it in the trash. The other was Diakafuckmetana.

I'm not sure if I would even spend the time to install B&W 2 if someone gave it to me for free.

For as many problems as it had I still respect him for trying to do something fresh with a game centered on AI. I find it especially relevant with the current love/hate discussions of the Revolution controller. I would hope that they fixed all of the major contentions from the first game. As was stated, the first level was great, then it just got tedious and frustrating. I don't buy many games these days and I'll certainly be waiting on this one too.

I remember the GG crowd going absolutely nuts over it the day it was released. I was suckered in and rushed to buy a copy at full price (which I rarely do). A couple of days later, the enthusiasm of GG (and myself) had transformed into the wailing and gnashing of teeth...

With that being said, I'm not completely against it... the concept was great; the execution was just flawed. If the gameplay lives up to it's potential, it should be a pretty good game.